From the real life adventures, many fictional stories were also published which gave fresh views of the slave life. The first novel written by an African American was Clotelle written by William Wells Brown, an escaped slave. It is the story of a fictional daughter of President Thomas Jefferson.

While the written word was used for political reasons, economic argument, scientific and religious debate on the slavery topic, it was the work of novels, both fiction and non-fiction works, that stayed within the view of Americans over a hundred and fifty years after the outbreak of the Civil War.

Politicians were just as loud on the anti-slavery side as they were on the pro-slavery line. It was not just individual politicians but entire parties who used the written word to promote their thoughts on slavery.

Abolitionists turned to the Bible just as quickly as those who defended slavery. The chancellor of Protestant University, William Wilson, stated that slavery was “at war with the image of God in which man was created”.

The power of the written word was embraced by those who opposed slavery. Through the work of abolitionists, anti-slavery material exploded onto the scene and became the most prominent. The old adage of the squeakiest wheel gets the grease applied here.

The writings of the pro-slavery faction did not just stop at political speeches or scientific dissertations. It spread into the world of fiction writing where authors rose up to counter the writings of the abolitionist and former slave who wrote of the hard life many slaves endured.

Even science chimed in on the topic in various publications including that of Dr. John H. Van Evrie. In “Negroes and Negro ‘Slavery’”, he examined the “specific character of the Negro” by “stripping off the skin of the negro” and proving him to be a “different and inferior species